New Map Hints At Venus' Wet, Volcanic Past

Matt_dk writes with this excerpt from Space Fellowship: "Venus Express has charted the first map of Venus' southern hemisphere at infrared wavelengths. The new map hints that our neighbouring world may once have been more Earth-like, with a plate tectonics system and an ocean of water. The map comprises over a thousand individual images, recorded between May 2006 and December 2007. Because Venus is covered in clouds, normal cameras cannot see the surface, but Venus Express used a particular infrared wavelength that can see through them."

Re:Volcanic, or just really hot?

[wjousts]

The melting points of most types of rock are quite a bit higher than that.

Re:Interesting, but was already assumed

[Opportunist]

Umm... someone correct me, but doesn't Venus have a pretty THICK atmosphere, rather? Just with insane pressure and a composition that would even make smog-accustomed LA residents refuse to take a breath?

Define "quite terra-formable"

[Roger W Moore]

There is the minor problem of the small fraction sulphuric acid and the small amount of nitrogen. If we really converted all the CO2 to O2 then fires would be a major concern. We would actually need to remove a large fraction of the atmosphere, add nitrogen (or other inert gas), filter out the H2SO4 and also find some way to massively increase the albedo to reduce the far greater heating from the sun. If you can do all of that then you are right - Venus is terraformable. Short of them finding the cure for aging I doubt I'm going to live to see it happen though.

Re:Interesting, but was already assumed

[scotsghost]

You're thinking of a Lagrange point [wikipedia.org]. It's analagous to a geostationary orbit -- it's position is fixed in space relative to two large masses.